End Run

What we're getting wrong about Republicans and Trump

Bill Bramhall | Tribune Content Agency

I couldn't figure out the endgame. An entire party abandoning its power and handing it off; abdicating their responsibility, their sworn obligation to uphold not the Constitution. That's bullshit. But to their pockets. Certfiably allergic to enforcing any of the guardrails. Emolluments Clause? Feh! Keeper of the purse? Pshaw. Is it a war, is it a skirmish? They're not just afraid of this president. They're enabling him Today's Republican party is content to watch that orange maniac tear down everything they allegedly believe in and for the life of me I could not figure out why. Until last week when SCOTUS disemboweled the Voting Rights Act. Y'all, these muthafuckas ain't leavin'. Trump is just the fall guy running cover, the one taking the hit for all the batshit stuff while they quietly consolidate. Cleanup on Aisle 12.

When I was a freshman in college I watched a made-for-tv movie, Resting Place, about a soldier killed in Vietnam who was denied burial in the town cemetery because he was black. His parents had to go to court and everything. It shocked me to tears. I came out of my room a burbling mess and found my friends--my next door neighbor and our hallmate in the lounge--a white cinderblock affair with fluorescent lighting and brightly colored benches, orange or yellow maybe--and tried to explain how betrayed I felt. Images of dogs and hoses turned in Black people--a 60 Minutes special my church had held a community viewing a couple of years before--came surging back into my mind, and I was I was reeling from the possibility that had cropped up in my Am Civ class that the only reason I was at that school (not my brain, not my test scores) was I was an Afgirmative Action hire. I wanted to commiserate with  friends at my very liberal Ivy league--Karen's mother (yes, her name really was Karen) had even called me beautiful.

I was more shocked when in response to my asking how I was supposed to pledge allegiance to a country like this, both girls responded with a heated and emphatic "my country right or wrong."  It was 1986. John Roberts was in the waning weeks of his appointment as Associate Counsel to Ronald Reagan. Five days before Christmas, that year, Michael Griffith, Cedric Sandiford and Timothy Grimes were chased out of Howard Beach by a white mob; Griffith was killed when he ran out into traffic.

Forty years later, 12 years after Tamir Rice, 10 years after Colin Kaepernick, six years after George Floyd, six months after Keith Porter Jr., Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres, Geraldo Lunas Campos, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, and so, so many more, John Roberts, having earlier found that that ICE could engage in racial profiling, now insists that the nation's changed, and is dancing on the Voting Rights Act's grave.

I can't tell if it's denial or he's just honed his racism down to a science of colorblindness, but John Roberts has has got a definite case. It's like dating a black woman, then getting mad at her when she's offended you listen to Joe Rogan right after he broke out the n-word--again (that actually happened). Or posting sensitve memes on Instagram from The Feminist Collective about staying hydrated and not being racist while watching your actual black friend drown when they reach out for support because a black man just got lynched on national TV and then being offended when they are angered by your silence (also happened). The lived experience of those on the receiving end of oppression is trumped (ick) by the fantasy of "it didn't happen to me, so it didn't happen." What follows inevitably is retrenchment. The Second Reconstruction.

When the planes hit the Twin Towers in 2001 Republicans and a couple of Democrats said it was because "they" hate our freedom. When Colin Kaepernick took that knee back in 2016, the Republicans said shut up and play because patriotism. When George Floyd was murdered they erased the very meaning and intent behind his death with the rerain "blue lives matter." They went after DEI and CRT because teaching history was actually teaching white children to feel bad about themselves and to hate America. It's been said. This Republican Party is actively repealing the 21st Century.

And they've got the perfect patsy in that orange maniac. The ink wasn't even dry on SCOTUS' opinion before a Virginia Appellate court overturned the new--popularly mandated map, while legislators all.over the south have started redrawing their maps to edit out Black and Brown voters, liberals, and anyone who isn't them. What they couldn’t win with failed policy, they will simply take by gerrymander. And Orange Man takes the blame. It's a bait and switch. He does the stupidi thing, the crazy thing, the illegal thing and they turn a blond eye bexause thebdistracriin works. The actual blood and guts spilled mean nothing compared to the win. The fix is in. The man would have seen them all murdered on January 6th, but they couldn't bring themselves to hold him to account and impeach his ass. He's too useful an idiot.
When the dumb shit got dumber folks on the left said, well, you broke it you bought it. But what we failed to realize was that was the plan all along--destroy what you can't contol otherwise. Fake news, fake facts, and pure exhaustion--talk about your long game. Let him stumble and bumble about  upend norms, the old ropadope. Meanwhile, they line their pockets and the wheels fall off. The right hand shakes the left. The tail wags the.dog. These people are hellbent on not going anywhere, whether we want them or not.

What I learned all thise years ago--or rather, what was finally confirmed, I'd always knoen--was that Reblicans never actually believed in democracy. That there had to be a Voting Rights Act at all is proof enough. They believe in Power and will take it however it comes. While the Left have been holding to truths made self-evident, the Right has been holding out for somethig a bit more expedent. It's bread and circus. And John Roberts is the man with the magic hat.